The present invention generally relates to filtering sensitive or confidential information, and in particular to filtering confidential information included in image and voice data.
In recent years, the number of users of portable information processing apparatuses, for example, third generation cellular phones and smart phones, is increasing. Many portable information processing apparatuses typified by, for example, by the iPhone®, iPod®, and iPad® devices from Apple Inc., can play back video, and the portability enables viewing of video in various scenes.
Recently, as the use of such multifunction portable information processing apparatuses have become more widespread, many users have come to view various types of video in crowds in, for example, in trains and restaurants. Some video to be played back includes, in addition to movies and video clips, confidential information, for example, secret information and private information that involves a confidentiality obligation and is provided by, for example, electronic commerce including Internet banking and Internet shopping, webcasts, and e-meetings. Viewing of such video in a crowd may result in leakage of confidential information.
Previous approaches to preventing leakage of confidential information include extracting improper display information from a display image on a monitor, determining an evaluation value of the display image in a manner that depends on the display information, and controlling the display image on the basis of the evaluation value. This approach determines the presence or absence of confidential information to be filtered using, for example, only characters and an image included in a display image. Thus, for example, when a voice in a video to be played back includes confidential information, the security system cannot determine the presence or absence of the confidential information included in the voice and thus cannot prevent leakage of the confidential information. In addition, previous approaches do not include a component feeding back the result of the determination of confidential information in a display image. Thus, even when the determination of confidential information is inappropriate, the result of the determination cannot be fed back to the security system, and the accuracy of determination of confidential information cannot be improved.